One kind of administrative system employed by healthcare enterprises is an accounting system. The accounting system includes, without limitation, accounts payable, accounts receivable, auditing, cash management, inventory control, order entry, purchase order, point of sale, payroll. Cash management further includes, without limitation, collections and deposits, payments and disbursements, and reconciliation of monthly statements, transactions, accounts, and balances.
Healthcare enterprises, such as hospitals, receive income by providing a community of people various types of inpatient and outpatient medical services. For example, approximately eighty percent (80%) of a typical hospital's income comes from medical insurance reimbursements and patient out-of-pocket co-payments and deductibles.
In addition to insurance reimbursements and patient income, a healthcare enterprise may also receive income from an employee cafeteria, a parking garage, a gift shop, a coffee shop, as well as, income from other entity affiliates such as physician practices, foundations, education and research, for example.
Typically, accounting staff manually gathers cash information from various revenue producing departments in the healthcare enterprise for entering into an accounting system. Usually, the cash information that is collected is not obtained on the same day that it is deposited, which creates difficulty in balancing accounts and underestimates month end receivables. Further, reductions in government healthcare reimbursements and increasing patient out-of-pocket healthcare costs each contribute to a growing need for an integrated cash control system.
In view of the foregoing, would be desirable for healthcare enterprises to know where their cash is coming from to support various accounting analysis such as projecting future income trends and managing cash flow. It would be desirable for healthcare enterprises to have a centralized mechanism that is capable of managing the collection, balancing, accounting, and reporting of cash that also incorporates appropriate cash controls. It would also be desirable for healthcare enterprises to receive daily and monthly reporting of cash receipts, and to balance cash received with monthly bank statements. It would be desirable for the cash management system to be electronically implemented to permit efficient, timely, secure, automated, and accurate tracking and control of the cash received. Further, it would be desirable to provide a controlled debit-to-cash journal entry for healthcare enterprises. Accordingly, there is a need for an accounting system having cash management for a healthcare enterprise.